Marker 2014: Central Asia and the CaucasusIn 2014, Art Dubai’s Marker programme is curated by the artists Slavs and Tatars and takes Central Asia and the Caucasus as its focus. Celebrating the complexities of faith, identity and language in these regions, Marker 2014 includes booth exhibitions, educational initiatives and a dynamic new publishing venture.

Marker focuses each year on a particular theme or geography, and epitomises Art Dubai’s role as a fair of discovery and a site for the production and exchange of knowledge and ideas.

For Marker 2014, Slavs and Tatars are working with each space and their artists to present existing and new work that together forms a collective exhibition through a ‘regime of portraiture,’ including faces, places and traces from mid-twentieth-century painting to contemporary drawings and sculptures. For the occasion, Marker 2014 will take the form of a chaikhaneh or Eurasian (tea) salon, to activate each work as a point of departure, to tell larger stories touching upon questions of faith, language, landscape; and importantly, how these notions are ritualised, interiorised, and hybridised beyond the often brittle politics of identity.

2014 also marks a new collaboration between Marker and onestar press, the renowned Paris-based artist book publisher. onestar will publish books by emerging and established artists from Central Asia and the Caucasus invited by Slavs and Tatars, including Reza Hazare, Taus Makhacheva and Armen Eloyan, among others.

Marker also features an extended education programme, which includes a research booth, daily talks and tours, and opportunities for upcoming curators to research and gain experience in this field. Marker’s education partner is Caspian Arts Foundation.

Slavs and Tatars is a collective with solo exhibitions at major museums—MoMA, Secession (2012), Kunsthalle Zurich, Dallas Museum of Art (2014)—as well as group exhibitions across the Middle East, North America and Europe. They have published six books, including a translation of the legendary Azeri political satire Molla Nasreddin (2011, JRP-Ringier).

The eighth edition of Art Dubai includes more than 87 galleries from 36 countries presented across three programmes—Contemporary, Modern and Marker. Known as one of the most global and innovative of art fairs, Art Dubai’s extensive not-for-profit programme includes artists’ and curators’ residencies; site-specific works and commissioned performances (Art Dubai Projects); an exhibition of works by winners of the annual The Abraaj Group Art Prize; and the critically acclaimed Global Art Forum.

Exhibitions, symposia and teaching positions at art schools world wide

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